11 Nov 2016

An Morvil Kornek or The Horned Whale, by Jeremy Schanche

An Morvil Kornek or The Horned Whale, by Jeremy Schanche, available now at all major ebook distributors, in all formats...
Plug in this electronic book and take a journey round the 'Shyre' - 
Come to Penwithershins and check out the Underground as Old Janner shows Pat Vulgata round the labyrinths of the mine in The Janetta Stone.
Dark New Lynsmouth has seen many tribulations, but none so great as that set forth in The Kramvil, a gothic novel of eldritch and extraordinary phenomena which unwinds its thread through the twisting alleys of the Old Quarter.  When the studious Elias Gillpington runs into the audacious scientist Lazarus Taxon, the wings of fate soon becloud the Keltek sky.  As the shadow falls upon New Lynsmouth, Elias sees a glint of light in the presence of the beautiful Miss Constance Place.  The story pulses and pullulates with life like a seething vat of yeast infested by furious clouds of flies and wasps on a sunny day, in an ancient lithograph of old Bombay.  Potent, frothy, well-charged and heady, this electric manuscript will give you the skittering jitters and chill your rattling trotters.
The collection of Poems will most likely sneak up on yous from downwind and lasso yous off to a land of golden sunshine, rustling leaves and phonographs furling out foxtrots 'fore rustling ya rational-mind and dry-gulching yous in Tuskaloosa or somewheres or some or other such place.
Next, for the word-hungry among ye, we have a couple of glossaries to teach the tongues of talking.  First be the Gerlyvryn Kernouac which explains some words of the ancient Cornish language which appear in the stories.  Then we have the International Glossary which covers words from overseas, ancient and modern, as well as some archaic forms of Sowsnek, or 'English'.  
For our closing act, we have Ghost-Hulk of a Phantom, a darkly comic portrait of a struggling writer - a halucinatory roulade of oceanic fervour - a splattering of adrenalin on a canvas of vast cabbage-fields.  
To cut a John Dory short and chase the choice cuts I gotta say that An Morvil Kornek or The Horned Whale is the kind of book the lack of which would crook and rook up your reading-life by an absence of the positive presence of its very special form of effervescence.  

There's 21 different ebook distributors selling The Horned Whale, including  Amazon, Apple (itunes), Baker and Taylor Blio, Baker-Taylor Axis 360, Barnes and Noble, Diesel, Flipkart, Gardners Extended Retail, Gardners Library, Inktera (formerly Page Foundry), Kobo, Library Direct, Odilo, OverDrive, Oyster, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony, Tolino, txtr, Yuzu, etc..  so there's a version out there to suit everyone.....  what follows are just a few of them - I'll put up the rest as they 'go live'...

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/671145

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/horned-whale-or-morvil-kornek/id1164163097?mt=11

https://www.scribd.com/book/327205836/The-Horned-Whale-or-An-Morvil-Kornek





If you enjoy An Morvil Kornek or The Horned Whale, please print out some flyers, cut them up an pass them around - spread the words...  Also, please link to this page on your social sites...  
Why not go totally hog-wild and print out a poster for ya home or the twisting back-alleys of your juddering home-town, ya sprawling metropolis or ya muddy one-horse village-street?
Hope you like the stories!  And remember, you can't judge a rook by its plover.  Take it easy now, but take it!
Jeremy Schanche






Here are some books by, or about, friends and family:
My brother's book:
My uncle's books:
A book about my two oldest friends:
A book by a distant cousin in USA about Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party:
Some books by my primary school teacher...:


... and his old pupil - my brainy mate:
A friend's book:
Another friend's book:
My weird evil ancestor's book:
Distant cousins, there's a limited supply:
And here's a true story, one we should all read: 
The actor:
The Boy-Racer:
The Geologist:
My youtube channel:
My other blog:  
Don't burn books - let them burn you...

23 Jan 2015

World of Dreams



AT MERLIN CINEMA PENZANCE ON FRIDAY 30th
The Journey Begins in action packed ,sci-fi adventure 'World Of Dreams'! Jason Taylor (Igor Sharp), a University student who has joined an excavation as part of a work placement with Dr Robert Goodwell (Carl Hobday). On the site he meets a Mysterious man (Tony King) who claims 'they have found something'. This in fact turns out to be a forgotten civilisation!

3 Dec 2014

The Journal of Elias Gillpington, Part 23. An Gath Vlewek 69, Kevardhu 2014.

What is sweeter than mead? – Intimate conversation.
What is blacker than the raven? – Death.
What is whiter than snow? – Truth.
What is swifter than the wind? – Thought.
What is sharper than the  sword? – Understanding.
What is lighter than a spark? – The mind of a woman between two men.

From the ancient Irish tale, The Wooding of Ailbe.

21 Nov 2014

A Cornish Experiment in Sustainable Power


With your help, we aim to build and test an experimental engine fuelled by wood chips to power a lightweight vehicle. We've been developing this new concept of biomass-fuelled engine, based on a combination of old and new ideas, and are now at the point where we can integrate our designs into a first complete engine. This will be an exciting next step after many years of research and practical experimentation.
We are a small team based in West Cornwall and like many forward-thinking people we are interested in renewable energy. With particular regard to engine fuels, the current mainstream approach is to grow monoculture crops that are then extensively processed into a format suitable for existing engines. For example, sugarcane is grown and then fermented to produce bio-ethanol as a petrol replacement fuel. We think that a far better approach would be to develop new engines designed specifically to run on a broad range of minimally processed plant matter, typically woodchips.

 
“I can’t resist getting behind these guys, if only so I can get a step closer to my dream of a carbon neutral wood-chip powered flail mower for River Cottage. And maybe an eco-jet ski to get me a bit quicker to my favourite inshore fishing marks…"
       Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall - River Cottage

Historically, Cornwall is the birthplace of high pressure steam power, and a very appropriate place to develop a new form of wood-gas fuelled steam engine. Our engine will be compatible with forestry brash, scrap wood, hedge trimmings, crop residues, and so on, which need only be dried and chipped. This engine could be used in all sorts of ways, but our first one will be used to power a modified recumbent trike.
Trees, woodchips, an engine and a new vehicle.
We will use our powered trike prototype for practical trials and for demonstrations. It will be a form of power-assist vehicle but with an important difference. Instead of having pedals, the rider will use leg power to pump air into the engine's combustion chamber to generate the heat needed to raise steam. The harder the rider pumps, the more steam pressure will be created and the faster the trike will go.

As far as we know, this concept has never been explored, and is actually more like a form of 'muscle-power amplification' (rather than power-assist). The engine and rider will have to work together to power the trike, and this makes for an unusually simple mechanical system.

       Our engine will basically consist of:
1. A high efficiency gravity-fed wood chip gasification/combustion system of our own design.
2. A monotube boiler
3. Our unique rotary expansion motor that uses flexible tube 'muscles' instead of pistons and cylinders.
4. A steam condenser
5. A circulation pump
6. Foot-operated high-flow air pumps.

       The technical spec for our engine will be:
Top operating pressure - 110psi
Combustion chamber exit temp - about 1000 degrees C (raising superheated steam to approx 250 degrees C)
Maximum power output - 1 horsepower (roughly three times more powerful than an average cyclist)
Warm up time from cold - around 5 minutes
Thermal efficiency - estimated between 15% - 20%
Fuel efficiency - we hope for about 25 miles per kg of wood chips
Given that we will be running on locally grown fuel, we expect the 'twig to wheel' efficiency to be unbeatably high!

We hope to validate this new concept as possibly the simplest engine yet devised capable of powering a vehicle using biomass. Variations of our engine may prove to be useful in many other ways (such as to power small boats, or generate electricity, etc.). Wood is an important renewable energy source - when grown and managed sensibly - and we aim to demonstrate that when it is burned correctly and in optimal conditions, it can also be a very clean and powerful fuel.


Your Help


Please explore the rewards offered for pledges to this project and help us if you can. See the budget section of our project website for a full breakdown of how we will use your money.
Our particular expertise is in the adaptation of existing and recycled parts and materials for the building of components; a methodology we refer to as shoestring durch technik. We expect the building and preliminary testing of the trike-with-engine to take 4 months.
If the project is successful we hope to build bespoke engines for anyone who wants to commission one. We may develop kits and plans to enable others to build them too, and it may help us to find government and/or private backing to develop our engine concept more seriously. We also hope to encourage the involvement of universities with our ideas.

Please enjoy our film and support our project!


Thank you.
Graham Waldren, Mat Thompson & Richard Blackborow
The Zennor Phoenix Team

How crowdfunding works


You pledge using the options on the right of the screen. Only if enough people pledge and we reach our target of £7,000 by our deadline will our campaign be deemed 'successful'. Then pledges will be collected and rewards distributed. We will thank and post the names of all our funders on our website. Those of you receiving willow cuttings will be contacted to find out when you'd like them, or if you'd like us to plant a tree for you. We will then enjoy the midwinter festivities before beginning our 4-month project on Monday 5th January.
January and February will be spent building the engine and adapting the trike. Those of you taking a tour of the woodland workshops and seeing developments will be invited towards the end of this period. In March we aim to be testing and refining the trike and by April finish the short film 'The Making of the Zennor Phoenix'. At this point we will honour all outstanding rewards.
There are two ways to pledge to make this project happen, via Paypal or Go Cardless. If you use PayPal, your donated amount will be debited from your account immediately and held by Crowdfunder until we reach our target, at which point it'll be given to us to start our project. If we fail to meet our target, the money will immediately be returned to your account. If you pay using Go Cardless, the amount you pledge is not debited from you account until such time as we reach our target. If we don't, the money is never debited. We hope that makes sense! Please contact us if you need any further clarification. Both payment options are safe and simple to use, and we thank you in advance for your generosity.
We will keep you all updated with our progress at key stages and send you all a report on the project at the end.
You can also pledge money to help support us and opt out of the offered rewards!
International pledges are accepted but additional postage will be added.
If you would like to know more about the rewards, or want to ask for something else, please use the 'send message' button. Let us know what you might like and how much you can pledge, and we will do our best to accommodate your ideas. We think that this is a really worthwhile ecological project and aim to make it interesting and entertaining too.
The Zennor Phoenix Project
Click on the image to visit the Zennor Phoenix Website, where you'll find more information about our project.

13 Nov 2014

Elias pt22

Sixty Seven

Issue 67 of your globalocal paper floats by on the winds of change, a polychromatic ephemeron, remembering a twentieth-century renaissance through some of its music.  The times have changed, but the spirit of the times lives on.  
Also:  issue 67 of The Caterpillar brings you Part 22 of our ongoing gothick novella from West Cornwall, The Journal of Elias Gillpington.  

Copyright Notice:  The Caterpillar is a Free Paper and you are welcome to print it out and share it – for Free.  The contents of The Caterpillar paper remain the property of the author and any attempt by other parties to make money from them would constitute an infringement of copyright.